1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a receipt issuing device for issuing receipts related to products purchased by customers, to a control method for a receipt issuing device, to a printing device, and to a control method for a printing device.
2. Related Art
Systems for executing transaction processes (payment processes) for products purchased by a customer in a store, for example, and issuing receipts using the transaction information (payment information) as the printed information, are known from the literature. Japanese Unexamined Patent Appl. Pub. JP-A-2004-151838, for example, teaches a receipt issuing system that uses a receipt issuing method whereby the customer can selectively have a paper receipt issued and/or an electronic receipt issued, or can indicate that a receipt is not needed. This system displays choices for “no receipt,” “electronic receipt,” or “paper and electronic receipts” on the display unit (a display unit that displays information for the customer) of a POS (point-of-sale) computer, and issues a receipt as requested by the customer (or does not issue any receipt) in accordance with the selection made by the user. If the customer does not make a selection, this system issues a receipt printed on receipt paper (a paper receipt).
A problem with the foregoing system is that the customer must select a receipt issuing method each time a purchase is made (each time a payment is made), and this tends to become tedious. As a result, customers that don't actually need a receipt (such as customers that pay using a mobile terminal or electronic wallet with a transaction processing function, or pay using a smart (IC) card, e-money, or other electronic payment processing) commonly end transactions without selecting the appropriate receipt issuing method (electronic receipt or no receipt), and an unnecessary receipt (paper receipt) is issued as a result.
A further problem with the foregoing method is that the application run on the POS terminal side must be modified to achieve the functionality enabling selecting the receipt issuing method, and the deployment cost of such a system therefore rises.